I had to build up several small mini-ITX systems for a local business this week. The requirements were that it had to run Windows XP SP3 (The custom software they run doesn't run on Windows 7) and be in a slim case that was under 4" thick. I went with the InWin BP671.200BL slim chassis with the 200W power supply. At $49.99 plus $9.99 shipping, it wasn't the cheapest case, but was one of the better looking and it had a decent layout with the PSU sitting above the motherboard and not over the board (for better airflow).

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All of the cases arrived and before installing any hardware in them, I checked the power supplies. All checked out at 12.0V on the +12V rail except for one that was 11.9V (within spec).

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The power supply used in the InWin BP671.200BL slim chassis is a standard TFX model with part number IP-S200DF1-0. After looking at the label it appears this PSU is made by a company called Power Man. This unit has a single +12V rail that is rated at just 14.0 Amps. It's been a long time since I have seen such a long PSU. They can be bought separately for around $34 shipped, so half the cost of this case is in just the PSU.

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I went with the AMD Brazos platform as it was perfect for what the customer needed and was very affordable. The Gigabyte GA-E350-USB3 motherboard fits great in this system! I went with 64GB SSD's and mounted them with 3M double sided tape under the optical drive bay. This customer didn't need optical drives, so it was literally a case, motherboard and SSD. About $250 in raw cost for each system. Windows XP SP3 installed on the 64GB SSD's and only took up 9GB of space. The biggest negatives on this chassis are how loud the case fan that comes with it is and that is doesn't support 2.5" drives.

The customer was upgrading Dell systems from 2004. The machines had AOpen power supplies that were blowing up one at a time. Five in the past 6 months, so they updated them. The Dell boxes had single core Intel Celeron 2GHz single-core processors and 512MB of memory. I checked one of the old working units and it was idling at around 90 Watts from the wall. These new boxes are dual-cores with 2GB of memory and use just 27 Watts of power in an idle state, so they will be saving hundreds of Watts as well as having much faster systems!

My Dell laptop is showing it's age. I can't believe it will only cost ~$250 to build a quicker and more efficient system.I know it's been a few years, but dang; you really notice how things have moved on

I remember spending thousands on a rig, water cooling it and spending hours looking at memtest screens to get performance.What's next? Asus release an eeepc for $200 that's faster than my system?HTC / Samsung etc are even rocking quad cores in their phones.

What is really funny, that juts a couple of years ago you couldnt build a decent rig for less then 600 USD for a basic internet/HTPC box. Now you can build a decent little gaming rig for around, comparable to a console more specifically, for around the same cost.

Looks like a clea set up Nate i liked how you kept the price down while giving them what they needed.